This blog post is written by Sven Vlaeminck | ZBW – German National Library of Economics / Leibniz Information Center for Economics
Background
In Economics, as in many other research disciplines, there is a continuous increase in the number of papers where authors have collected their own research data or used external datasets. However, so far there have been few effective means of replicating the results of economic research within the framework of the corresponding article, of verifying them and making them available for repurposing or using in the support of the scholarly debate.
In the light of these findings B.D. McCullough pointed out: “Results published in economic journals are accepted at face value and rarely subjected to the independent verification that is the cornerstone of the scientific method. Most results published in economics journals cannot be subjected to verification, even in principle, because authors typically are not required to make their data and code available for verification.” (McCullough/McGeary/Harrison: “Lessons from the JMCB Archive”, 2006)
Harvard Professor Gary King also asked: “[I]f the empirical basis for an article or book cannot be reproduced, of what use to the discipline are its conclusions? What purpose does an article like this serve?” (King: “Replication, Replication” 1995). Therefore, the management of research data should be considered an important aspect of the economic profession.
The project EDaWaX
Several questions came up when we considered the reasons why economics papers may not be replicable in many cases:
First: what kind of data is needed for replication attempts? Second: it is apparent that scholarly economic journals play an important role in this context: when publishing an empirical paper, do economists have to provide their data to the journal? How many scholarly journals commit their authors to do so? Do these journals require their authors to submit only the datasets, or also the code of computation? Do they pledge their authors to provide programs used for estimations or simulations? And what about descriptions of datasets, variables, values or even a manual on how to replicate the results?
As part of generating the functional requirements for this publication-related data archive, the project analyzed the data (availability) policies of economic journals and developed some recommendations for these policies that could facilitate replication.
To read about the results of the EDaWaX survey, please see the full blog post on Open Economics.
Data Policies of Economic Journals
Velichka is Project Coordinator of Open Economics at the Open Knowledge Foundation. She is based in London, a graduate of economics (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) and environmental policy (University of Cambridge) and a fellow of the Heinrich Böll Foundation @vndimitrova
